Subscripts Concluded and Word Order

PRESERVING TIBETAN

June-July 2007

By David Curtis

We could say that learning to read the script is to studying Tibetan what completing the preliminary practices is to practicing the Dharma. Learning to read the Tibetan script, however, usually takes a person just forty or fifty hours. And along with learning the script, one learns some fundamentals of the grammar, some basic vocabulary, and how to use the dictionary. This is the subject of this series of articles.

With this column we will complete the fourth of the seven stages on the journey of learning to read Tibetan: the subscripts. We will look briefly at how words are put together to form phrases.

Figure 1 re-introduces our paradigm word. It is made up of the seven elements, the learning of which comprises the seven stages of learning to read. It is a word pronounced droop and means “accomplished or finished.” Looking at droop, we see the root, the vowel, and the superscript – all elements we have presented in previous articles. We also see the subscribed RA, which we will now discuss. …

Use problems as ornaments, seeing them as extremely precious, because they make you achieve enlightenment quickly, by getting you to achieve bodhicitta. Experience these problems on behalf of all sentient beings, giving all happiness to sentient beings. This is the ornament.